In this essay I will be comparing two natural disasters. My LEDC being the 2010 Haiti earthquake and my MEDC being the 1995 Kobe, Japan earthquake (also referred to as the great hanshin earthquake). Haiti is one of the poorest countries with a GDP1 of US$ 846 per capita in 2014, while Japan is quite rich with a GDP of USD 4,596.16 per capita in 2014. The rest of this essay will talk about the social, economic, physical and geographical similarities and differences of these earthquakes.
A similarity in both earthquakes is the fact that they were both not prepared. There are no sources that said there were any warnings or predictions for the Kobe earthquake however those in Haiti were given a warning. The fact is they simply couldn’t afford to evacuate or to get something done about it to protect or save as many lives as they could. The last major earthquake that hit Haiti was all the way back in 1994 and Kobe hadn’t even had an earthquake like this before. Kobe did not have very much earthquake proof infrastructure, like Haiti, they had some old buildings that just collapsed during the earthquake. The damage costs and GDP/financial states in both countries are
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In Kobe, there were over 300 fires raged over kobe that burned down lots of the remaining buildings. This trap some people as well. In Haiti there were a set of unusual tsunamis after the initial earthquake. This further destroyed many other homes as well as killed 3. Another similarity is that lots of the infrastructure was destroyed in the earthquakes. 90% of the buildings in Haiti were destroyed after the earthquakes. The magnitude of both quakes are quite similar, Kobe’s being a 6.9 and Haiti being a 7. There is a 0.1 difference but it shows how different the places and their infrastructure is. It shows that even though there was only a small 0.1 difference Kobe was able to survive it better because they had stronger buildings, roads etc than